Help the Kelp

Bull Kelp Recovery Program

How You Can Help

Donate Today: From divers to scientists to farmers, this is a big project.

Become a citizen scientist. Join our dockside sampling team (16 and over)

Report sunflower sea stars if you see them! They are a good urchin predator

Become informed and spread the word

Help create a market for purple urchin

Bull kelp. Photo courtesy of NOAA

ECOSYSTEM IN CRISIS

Bull kelp forests are the foundation – or structure – of our nearshore coastal ecosystem. The floating canopy of this brown algae gives shelter to young fish and the kelp itself provides food for valuable species, such as red abalone and red sea urchin.

Today, our kelp forests are in serious trouble. Though annually variable, in the past five years, California’s kelp forests have decreased by93% of normal. Higher sea surface temperatures in recent years have limited kelp growth, and sea star wasting disease has removed a key predator of purple sea urchins, a veracious eater of kelp. Though our waters have cooled this past year, the explosion of the purple urchin population—60 times higher than normal—and has prevented the kelp forests from recovering from these multiple blows.

The effects of the kelp forest loss reach from the ocean to the shore. The red abalone fishery, severely impacted by a lack of food, has been closed this year. Fewer fish has meant that shore birds do not have enough food for their chicks. This year, 90% of the local cormorant and 80% of the black oystercatcher nestlings failed to survive. Fewer young fish also means fewer larger fish for marine mammals, such as harbor seals and sea lions.

Click photo to see commercial urchin divers removing purple urchin as part of Help the Kelp.

In the nearshore environments, urchin now out compete red abalone and other herbivores for kelp, creating what’s known as an urchin barren. This is what we are seeing along most of our coastline today.

What’s Being Done to Address this Crisis?

A highly collaborative team has formed on the north coast to begin clearing purple urchin from an area, creating essentially a kelp “refuge” area. The goals of this program are:

Support the natural recovery of bull kelp along the Mendocino and Sonoma coasts by creating kelp refuge areas. As an annual species, bull kelp needs to release spores to produce next year’s forests. By significantly reducing density of purple urchin in refuge areas, kelp will have a chance to recruit, grow to full size and reproduce.

Support the development of a commercial market for purple urchin. Red urchin are the commercial urchin that provide uni to your favorite sushi restaurant. Purple urchin are much smaller, and they too are starving so there isn’t a food market for this species. In fact, purple urchin have outcompeted the red urchin and there is currently no real commercial urchin fishery. Our program hopes to create a products for the purple urchin, such as a calcium source for fertilizer. Let us know if you have any good ideas on how to use these urchin.

Monitor the dynamics between kelp and urchin. We certainly need to know more about the ongoing interaction between these species. Excessive urchin grazing has created >65% bare rock in highest urchin density areas. How fast will kelp recover once urchin are removed. How quickly will urchin reinvade a refuge area? How long can kelp spores remain viable in urchin barrens? Higher ocean temperatures and more acidic waters are changing the way these two species interact with each other.

Engage community partners, students and citizen scientists. We live in a coastal environment reliant on our local ocean resources, whether for our job, our dinner, our vacation, or our enjoyment. To turn this crisis around, we will need the support of everyone, whether as a dockside sampler of purple urchin coming in, as a donor of our effort, more eyes in the water, or as a partner organization that can fill an important role. Contact us at [email protected] to inquire about becoming involved.

Create research priorities for the larger ecosystem issues. Scientists will be working hard to identify the research needed to facilitate broad scale recovery and increase the resilience of bull kelp forest ecosystems in the face of increasing climatic and ecological stressors in 2018. We will share this with the public as that information becomes available.

By looking at where we have had persistent kelp beds historically and have protection from the swell, we selected three sites that to create kelp oasis zones–free of purple urchin. Working in areas of previously existing kelp patches increases the likelihood of local availability of spores to support kelp growth in the cleared refuge areas.

2018 will be our project’s pilot year, as we work through process and options for growing the project. We plan to remove urchin for at least 3 years.

Kelp coverage in 2008 compare to 2016, the last year aerial data is available. Kelp patches have reduced even further the past 2 years.

Recreational Diver Involvement

In April, the CA Fish and Game Commission approved emergency regulations for recreational take of purple sea urchins Off Mendocino and Somona Counties, increasing the daily bag limit from 35 individuals to twenty (20) gallons (that’s four 5-gallon buckets full). Because of this increase, our recreational dive partners at the Watermen’s Alliance will begin organizing urchin removal dive weekends along the Sonoma and Mendocino Coasts. These dives will target key places along the coast that are historically good for fish and safe for divers, and work to enhance what is being done by the commercial divers. Contact Josh Russo at the Watermen’s Alliance for more information ([email protected] or (707)333-9575).

Crushing v. Culling

We are working with local commercial urchin divers to clear out purple urchin from our refuge sites. Clearing techniques include urchin removal (e.g. hand-picking, airlift) so that the urchins may be quantified at the dock and utilized by the processors, but our project will consider crushing under the right conditions. When urchin are reproductively viable, crushing will artificially spawn them and actually make the problem worse. Urchin crushing will only be pursued when a project partner has determine that there is very low gonad present in the urchins and no risk of spawning. Our team is appealing to Fish and Game Commission to create “free urchin days” (remove the daily bag limit) allowing recreational divers and local citizen scientists to contribute to the effort by smashing or removing urchin in the nearshore through a coordinated effort.

Bull Kelp Monitoring

Subtidal transect surveys will be conducted by CDFW and ReefCheck within the refuge areas to compare with surveys within the existing kelp patch. These surveys will be conducted within August and September to allow comparisons with previous year. Young bull kelp surveys will be conducted in spring (April – June) to assess the early growth of bull kelp inside and outside of the existing kelp patch and the refuge area. The Noyo Center for Marine Science will deploy mini-ROV and 360-degree camera with local volunteers and interns to document young bull kelp growth and reinvasion of purple urchin. Adult bull kelp aerial surveys will be conducted in October to determine the spatial extent of surface kelp in the project zones.

Our Partners grows weekly, and includes:

We Need YOU!

Redwood Elementary’s First Grade combined project in this year’s Marine Art and Science Fair depicting a healthy kelp forest and an urchin barren.

Come up with a great idea about how to use purple urchin so we can create a commercial market for this species. This will put divers back to work and help our local economy.

Spread the word about this important project. Loosing these kelp forests forever would be catastrophic to our way of life.

Support climate change legislation and reform. The ocean absorb over 90% of the fossil fuels released into the atmosphere and the increase in temperature and acidity is creating these impacts all over the world. Clean energy today.